School checking out home before 4 yr old starts school

No idea about Scotland! I only worked in England.

thatbags As I said before some schools have many children arriving in September who they have not seen before ( well, maybe at the new children open days in July) I accept that there will be a significant number of children who start school happily and without looking back! However I have also had many kids who have been bewildered and unhappy away from their parent/carer, often for the first time. It is merely an attempt to minimise that upset. Schools cannot second guess which children will be benefit from home visits so schools that choose to visit offer the opportunity to all!

Please read the first part of the first sentence of my last post, pen.

I wasn't slagging off the teachers either. I just think that a lot of young mothers who may not have had good experiences at school themselves, or may be in awe of teachers who are professionals and child experts while they are not, may feel just a little intimidated by them come into their homes.

I also think it's a lot to expect a teacher to have sufficient training to handle parents and children and put all at their ease. To go into a strangers house as a stranger themselves knowing little of the domestic circumstances they are walking into seems a little dodgy to me.

I have a great deal of respect for teachers and would never, ever slag them off. I'm just not sure about this policy.

FlicketyB Being from a council estate, suffering from deprivation of poverty, disability, unemployment and let us not forget the drug abuse, I home schooled my son for four years. We had a Home School Education Assessment regular where a lady from the Home School Education Division would come to our home and see what my son was progressing in and where he was up to in his studies, where I had taken him (yes, we actually went to see Shakespeare and Dickens at the theatre in our deprivation!) and looked at what he was preparing to do for the following months. I didn't mind one bit that someone from the education department came and saw where we lived and what we were up to. I had nothing to hide. No drugs, no shame, just a loving family home. In fact, by then, wonder of wonder, I had already got my daughter through University and graduated. A single mother from a council house.

My son is now back in college doing his 'A' levels and well on his way too to University.

Be very careful in future when you tar all council estate people as poor, disabled, unemployed and with drug problems. You just might be speaking to someone from an estate where decent people live.

What on earth is wrong with reception/nursery school teachers visiting a family home to introduce themselves, and talk one to one with the child's parents? As Penstemmon, Aka, and Mamie have said, it's not about judging families, it's about helping ease the transition into school. Parents can refuse, should they want to.
Staff from the nursery I work in visit each and every child at home, before they start. It helps the transition into a new environment. The aim is to start the process of building a relationship between the school and home, to help the child.

Sorry,but it cannot benefit the vulnerable child,so I see no purpose for it.Teachers like every profession will have the good and the not so good to the bad.Abused children even murdered children,have not been helped by their teachers.Too much political correction governs what they can and cannot do.

Marmark1 - I don't understand what you mean by "too much political correction governs what they can and cannot do".

Just got back to this one. No, Aka, I understand perfectly that reception children shoild eased in gently - I have two children and five grandchildren, so been there! My point is that this year, the little one is starting a full week after school reopens. All the reception children are starting on the same day, so it's not phased, and the teachers are spending the first week visiting childrens' homes. So there is an additional week for working parents to worry about. I don't at all think this a some kind of ruse to make teachers' lives easier - just think it's a bit of a waste of time!

Iam64
Sorry,PC as it's called.Making sure nobody is upset by your actions basically.

Why is the 'transition' from playgroup, nursery or home so difficult for some children? What proportion of children are we talking about? And what, exactly, are the difficulties we are talking about?

Genuine questions.

There are some children who, through family circumstances, aren't used to mixing with other children. Not all children go to playgroup or nursery and they mostly start school at 4 - that's still very young. You used to be able to defer starting school until 5 but if you did that now, you'd miss the chance of choosing the school you wanted. There are quite a lot of children whose first language isn't English, and it may be that their culture doesn't result in them learning the same things as indigenous children. A lot of children take to school with enthusiasm but many don't. This determination to get them all in a classroom as early as possible ignores the variation in development among young children. Raise the school starting age to 7 is what I say, and keep the nurseries going!

I agree about raising the school age and giving more support to nursery schools.

I also think, as I've said before, that some primary schools are quite simply too large. That alone must be terrifying for many small children.

I guess because children are all different. My eldest GD is very nervous about new situations. She found starting nursery difficult, infant school difficult, junior school difficult and is currently very worked up about starting secondary school. She is a very talented dancer and athlete but suffers from performance nerves. Her sister is extremely confident and has no problems at all in new situations and loves (gymnastic) competitions.
The home visit helped the elder but made no difference to the younger.
Here in France there is no induction and the neighbours all discuss how long the children (aged 2 upwards) have cried for (days for some of my friends GCs). In my GC's school in Spain the teachers don't get allocated to the new school until a few days before. My grandson with Aspergers started (as they all do) once he was toilet trained, but he was too small and floppy to climb on the toilets (no teaching assistants) so his parents were called down to change him. That wasn't too good a start.
I prefer the careful induction of the English system that exists now. I can still remember how traumatised I was by starting school.
I can't help feeling people might have had a different reaction to this thread if the title had been about how the home visit would be used to support the child in starting school rather than "checking out the home" which is not what it is about.

Raising school starting age.

I think we've got past the checking out the home aspect.

A child who is too small to use the toilets is too small to be at school.

Or the toilets are too big.

Minibags's 1980s purpose built nursery classroom had adult-sized toilets. At the same school built in the 1950s, the toilets for the infant classes were just the right size for five and six year olds.

Seems we have got worse at helping kids feel comfortable at school.

I have clear memories of starting school in 1954, never having been to nursery or play group.
I wasn't the least worried about the teachers, despite the fact that slaps on the wrists or thighs were not infrequent occurrences.
But the other children were a source of great anxiety

I wonder if modern children feel like that, and if schools see interaction with their peers as a problem area for their pupils?

Yes, they do!

I think the problem is the OP which say the school is 'checking out' the home. Which is not the case.

this perhaps explains the Home Visit Policy

Not all children go to playgroup or nursery and they mostly start school at 4 - that's still very young. You used to be able to defer starting school until 5 but if you did that now, you'd miss the chance of choosing the school you wanted.

Just to pick up on Lilygran's first two points:

Yes, four is very young (my DGD started full-time school a couple of days after her 4th birthday).
You are able to defer starting school until 5 but the child then goes straight into year 1 at age 5 and misses out the whole of the reception year, which is very valuable and the year in which they get to know their peer group (if they did not know them before). So there is no point in doing that.

Some children may not have been to playgroup or nursery before starting school, so a home visit could perhaps be of value for them (although I am still not convinced). However, if the idea of the home visit is to ease the child into school, then for a child who has been to nursery or playgroup it is probably of little value.

If it is such a good idea, why do school nurseries or Early Years playgroups not send staff into children's homes to meet them before they start? It could be that starting at these is even more daunting for 2 or 3 year olds.

Starting school at 5+ seems a better idea to me. As far as I remember, years ago we started in the September after our 5th birthday and I don't think we learnt any less. Judging by the other thread on literacy we probably learnt more.

Actually Jane that's DGD3's main fear - the other children!

Wonder why we've not heard of it here.Is it new for this year?

It's been going on for at least 40 years at least in some areas.

rosequartz School nurseries do home visits..that is what I was doing a long time ago in the 80s.

Do those who think is is a dodgy idea think schools /teachers thought up the idea based on nothing but a chance to be nosy??

The reason some schools started this practice was because they had numbers of children finding it difficult to settle into school. They have kept doing it because they find it helps children. Believe me they would not be doing it if it did not pay dividends for the children.

We ( & other schools) modified our initial practice and it evolved to meet changing needs (ie meeting the child in their day care setting).